The Best Books You’ve Never Read (61 Critics Pick Their Favorites in New York Magazine)

Looking for a good book to take on vacation instead of one of those clinkers that may end up on my list of the summer’s worst beach books? Sixty-one critics and writers pick “the best under-the-radar books of the last ten years or so” in the current issue of New York magazine(June 4) www.nymag.com/arts/books/features/2007/32390/.

The literati who chose books include Frank Rich, Katha Pollitt, Michael Cunningham,Azar Nafisi and, well, me. Rich loves Leslie Epstein’s San Remo Drive, Pollitt praises Robert Hellenga’s The Fall of a Sparrow, Cunningham went for Jonathan Baumbach’s On the Way to My Father’s Funeral and Nafisi singled out Robert M. Sapolsky’s A Primate’s Memoir: Neuroscientist’s Unconventional Life Among Baboons. I chose Guiseppe Pontiggia’s great novel of fatherhood, Born Twice, reviewed on One-Minute Book Reviews on March 8, 2007 www.oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/2007/03/08. The review is archived with the March posts (and there’s a reading group guide saved in the Totally Unauthorized Reading Group Guides category).